Case Study: OCC Recovery

Challenge
A waste recycling facility was looking to recover mainly OCC (Old Corrugated Cardboard) from his waste stream. They saw the value in recovering this product, but were presently manually sorting the material off of the floor on a daily basis. Even with floor sorting, the customer was able to recover in the neighborhood of 10-12 bales per day.

Approach
GK was approached by the customer at the 2010 Waste Expo show and was asked if we could come up with a more efficient method for them to recover OCC from their waste stream. They had a brand new building that they wanted to install a sorting system in to recover this material.

Solution
GK not only came up with a good way to recover the OCC, but also added the capabilities, through a fully integrated recycling system approach, to recover plastics, metals, paper print, wood, and non-ferrous metals. The system GK proposed included an inclined feed belt with load hopper, a large vibratory FINGER-SCREEN™, a fines belt with magnetic head pulley, a seven bunker pick station with over-head magnet, and a cross belt to transfer material over a pit to the baler.

Results
In the first week of operation, the customer recovered 18 bales of OCC per day on average. They also have been able to bale aluminum, plastic, and other items. After a few weeks of operation, they now are capable of recovering up to 77 bales of OCC in one day. Not only did the General Kinematics recycling system automate their process, but it increased their daily throughput significantly, allowing the customer to expand their capabilities for inbound material and increase their resalable material.